Bottle of Smoke
by Super Secret Siha
Summary: A shadow follows Courier Six into the Divide. Deathclaws happen. Sequel to "The Gambler." Rated M for all the good stuff.


**A/N: Hello, and welcome to the new story! I spoke to a few people about a sequel, and to them I say many thanks. The following is nothing like we talked about. That is for the next one. If I get around to a next one. Bethesda owns all.**

According to Lord Caesar, datura antivenom was not a chem. Legion boys across the Mojave carried a vial of Courier Six's all-natural, high potency concoction. Caesar would have known about the fascinating properties of sacred datura root if he'd talked to Salt-Upon-Wounds for longer than five minutes. And he would have found out about the spore plant pods if they had spoken for more than ten.

Everybody said the White Legs were nothing but scavengers, but they were good for one thing: making stuff with the sacred root. The Courier's only regret was that she never got the daturana recipe from Salt-Upon-Wounds before assisting Joshua Graham in the tribal leader's execution.

Six carried half a vodka bottle of antivenom with her into the Divide. It was the last of her private stash, and she was out of little clay vials. The venomous fucking tunneler caught her in the abdomen. Close quarters, too close for flash bangs. Six was still uneasy about unarmed combat, and she was shit at melee. If it hadn't been for Ed-E, she'd have died before the toxin had any effect.

Datura antivenom tasted different, depending on where you'd acquired the spore plant pods. The Courier's stash was straight up Zion strain. You could taste the Yao Guai if you knew what you were looking for. Six took a shot of the light green liquid and remembered the echoes of badly-sung country music against canyon walls.

Vulpes Inculta carried two vials of the Courier's antivenom with him when he followed her into the Divide. One vial contained spore plant pod extract from the Vault 22 strain, and the other from the rare Dionaea Muscipula of Big MT. He didn't know this, only that the scarcity of datura had raised the cost of Six's product. Vulpes never quibbled with Six's prices. The woman charged fairly, and usually warned the buyer when expenses were about to increase.

She really should have murdered House before Caesar had set that hit squad on her. Now, in a show of not fucking around, he periodically had to march a team of idiot boys to their demise. Irritating for everyone involved, but you did what you had to do.

The Good Lord wanted to maintain an interest in Zion. That fucking Courier could be his influence. When he won the dam, the Son of Mars planned to send her back to the Malpais Legate with a message. For now, Vulpes was to discover what the traitor Ulysses wanted from the woman. After that, the Fox had options.

The spy kept a fair distance from the Courier and her flying robot companion, lest the latter, and through it Ulysses, detect him. At sunset, he hid behind one of three or four dead deathclaws along the High Road. Six was causing explosions (again) up ahead. She climbed down off the road to investigate something, her robot trailing behind her.

Standard procedure was to wait ten minutes and then get closer to see what was happening. Would a different location, back up the bridge, give Vulpes a better look? He was just getting up to check it out when he heard the robot's danger alert. Six backed up onto the road about ninety seconds later, shooting and cursing as a pack of bioluminescent beasts pursued her.

The dark places along the path behind them were littered with the looted corpses of these creatures. Some had been dissected, Vulpes observed. A new poison in the works, perhaps? A miracle cure for canine hip dysplasia? One wondered if the Courier sometimes sliced them up just for fun.

Where was the robot? The pack had knocked it out, no doubt, and then went after Six. Vulpes had picked up a sniper rifle earlier that day. Nobody would notice if he nudged the situation in the right direction.

The keen-eyed Fox peered through the scope and targeted the spiky beast furthest from the Courier's position. They were fast, but they didn't seem to like the road. Vulpes took a breath, blew it out, and squeezed the trigger. The creature's head exploded, and Vulpes ducked down behind the dead deathclaw.

A few moments later, he heard the woman scream, "Fucking tunnelers!" The last of the pack fell to ash and the day fell to darkness. Now they had a name.

Fucking tunnelers. Six had attempted every method she could think of to extract something useful out of the fucking tunnelers. The venomous variant secreted toxins through its hide and claws, near as she could tell, but she couldn't find the gland from which the poison came. The Courier had examined the bodies of two standard variants and a hulking fucking tunneler as well to compare them all. Results had been inconclusive.

From the one who had poisoned her first, Six carried its hide and its fucking teddy bear.

Ed-E bounded back to life and joined her on the road. Good thing, too, because she wasn't going back down to that shack to retrieve her bouncy little buddy until daylight. And anyway, Six wouldn't be sticking around here with deathclaws and fucking tunnelers all night. She wanted to travel past the lit-up barrels into what was probably Marked Men territory and find shelter near a campfire.

Problem with that plan was the satchel charges, which she hadn't figured out how to disarm yet. The first one nearly blew her legs off. Six was quick, though, and jumped back to a safer distance. Got a little singed, but nothing a pack of Fancy Lads and a Sass couldn't treat.

The Courier laid her bedroll alongside the road, near a lit barrel. No way was she dealing with explosives until tomorrow. The cakes lived up to their name, as they were indeed fancy. The Sass was warm, but Six was used to warm Sass.

She was thinking about radiation and its effect on Marked Men and fucking tunnelers. In the Madre, Six hypothesized, the Cloud and holotechnology had joined forces to create the Ghost People, who were useless but for their cumbersome bear trap claws. What element combined with the Divide's radiation to produce the unique species that inhabited the region?

The Divide offered up nothing to harvest. Everything had to be scavenged, or purchased from the commissaries. No plants to eat and use, just pre-packaged old world rad chow. That hulking fucking tunneler she'd cut up had a couple of mushrooms on it, but Six couldn't find any fungus in that cave or any other since she'd followed Ulysses' deep, compelling voice into hell.

Voice like a big brass bell vibrated through the cracks in her brain. Talked riddles, insinuating that she had done horrible things. It was like he was following her from ahead.

Maybe Ulysses knew an alias she used to go by, or maybe he knew the name of the person who'd taught her all the things she had understood immediately upon awakening at Doc Mitchell's place. Like how to make stims and how to optimize a Pip Boy's functions. No one in the Mojave had even pretended to recognize who Courier Six was before Benny had left her for dead in the Goodsprings Cemetery, so a clue—any clue—would be a start.

This was why she traversed the relentless terror of the Divide's barren landscape. She'd left a trail of her own for others to follow in case she never came back.

Six had sold a broc flower to the last commissary she'd visited. She imagined some intrepid traveler walking this path, with a spare xander root and a syringe on his person. He would find the flower, make a stim, and not die just then. The broc flower would give the traveler hope, something in short supply everywhere these days.

Vulpes lay under a car on the road, the better to hide from any potential enemies. Being a spy was not all extravagant parties and intrigue and seduction all the time. Often it was murder on his back. He reached carefully into a pocket and pulled out a small plastic baggie. Inside the baggie was a crushed-up broc flower.

Clever bitch knew someone would shadow her. Vulpes dragged his thumb over the surface of the baggie and returned it to his pocket. In the car bottom's rusted-out metal was a hole, and through the hole, the darkness of the Divide. The spy slept lightly, and dreamed of scuttling sounds in the black.


End file.
